The Constitution says that:

The Secretary whose duties shall be to deal with correspondence relating to Club affairs, issue notices of General Meetings, record and publish the minutes of Committee meetings and General Meetings, record and publish details of Club policies as decided by the members and Committee in a format suited to providing a permanent archive of information useful to future memberships/Committees, and as otherwise specified in this Constitution.

IMC Constitution

Emergency action:

If an emergency arises involving a member or members of the club the President, Chairman and Secretary will consult together in person or by phone as soon as possible and decide what action needs to be taken and what statement, if any, should be made to Club members and/or the general public.

Meetings

Before

Give a timely reminder to Committee members that a meeting is coming up.

Consult with the Chairman on the agenda for Committee meetings. Draw up an agenda which is action based. Avoid things like “Introduction to Rockclimbing” and go for “Approve Training Officer’s plans for appointment of Introduction to Rockclimbing organiser”

Circulate the agenda to Committee members with any relevant papers (even if these have previously gone out, people might have mislaid them and email is free).

During

Take minutes of the meeting. Don’t waste time on recording every sentence spoken by everyone. The decisions and any reasons that led to them and any major objections rejected are usually enough.

Encourage the Chair to create a noticeable point where any decision is being made during a meeting, to summarise the decision and to ask all present for a nod. This should be somewhere  on a scale between a formal vote at one extreme and a discussion where one or two loud voices can give the impression that everyone agrees at the other.

After

Check your 1^st draft of the Minutes with the Chair and then circulate them ASAP after the meeting. (It is handy to use the agenda document as the foundation for typing the minutes.). Post the draft minutes to “Committee Matters “on the website, amending them if members agree corrections.

If someone at the meeting is recorded as being required to do something this should be highlighted by a footnote or action column or otherwise in the minutes.

Keep a list of who is supposed to do what after the 1^st meeting. Add new items after subsequent meetings and delete stuff that has been done. This prevents jobs being sucked into the memory hole and forgotten.

Write any letters to anyone who needs/ought to be told about an item raised at a meeting. This includes using the website or email to tell the general membership about what id going on.

Deal with all general correspondence promptly if the answer already exists and no Committee decision is needed. Put all correspondence before the Committee meeting, including any emails from Committee members to the rest of the Committee. Circulate these items before the meeting so that time need not be wasted reading them at the meeting.

Email and website

Email is forwarded from officer@irishmountaineeringclub.org to the officer’s personal email address. Keep these forwarding addresses up to date via the webmaster

Encourage new (and old) committee members to set their own email up so that they can send mail under their IMC name. They should get into the habit of doing this because it helps keep the network of contacts together by having a consistent email address through the years despite jobs changing hands.

Maintain the section “Information” on the website. This section contains various pieces of useful information on decisions by the club which are not part of the Constitution but are still binding decisions; also information that people might find useful and information that should be available to them. See the constitution extract above.

Do the same with the “Committee” section. The webmaster has set up the site so that when committee members log on this link will become visible. Remind committee members of this fact so that if they want to see minutes etc. they can avoid having to search their mailbox. The idea is that it should be a filing system for Committee members. Also include officers’ handbooks in this section.

AGM

Make sure that required preliminary notice of the AGM appears in the last issue of the Newsletter before the notice deadline. This covers those who must get notice in writing but Email notices can also be sent. It is difficult to have too much communication, easy to have too little.

Issue the AGM agenda by post to those who must get post and by email and website.

Provide voting cards for Full Members at the AGM

Record and issue AGM minutes as soon as possible after AGM. Post the reports and draft minutes in “Info for members” on the website. Invite corrections and after a decent interval Change “Draft Minutes” to “Minutes” on the website.

Publish AGM minutes in Newsletter.

Keep a record of AGM attendance.

General

Be vigilant that all Committee actions are in accordance with the Constitution.